Judge OKs evidence from tainted trial

John McCormick, Tribune staff reporterCHICAGO TRIBUNE

A Cook County judge ruled Wednesday that evidence obtained as part of the wrongful arrest and conviction of a Chicago man in the rape of a pregnant woman can be used against him in his coming attempted murder and armed robbery trial.

Defense attorneys had asked Judge James Linn to throw out evidence from a police lineup in which Dana Holland was identified as one of two men responsible for an armed robbery and attempted murder in February 1993 in Chicago.

Though the judge acknowledged Holland was the victim of "a miscarriage of justice" in relation to his rape conviction, he said police had not acted improperly when they connected him to the armed robbery case while he was under arrest on the rape charge.

Earlier this year, after DNA tests cleared Holland of the rape, Linn set aside a 90-year sentence Holland was serving and subsequently ordered a new trial on the attempted murder and armed robbery charges.

Holland, who remains in custody as he awaits a May 27 trial, was convicted in 1995 of attempted murder and armed robbery, while his alleged accomplice, an uncle, was acquitted.

At Holland's rape trial in 1997, the uncle testified that he himself had consensual sex with the pregnant woman in a car, but Holland was convicted of the February 1993 crime. Prosecutors have not filed charges against anyone else in the rape case.

Holland was arrested near his uncle's South Side home shortly after police interrupted what was described as an hourslong sexual assault inside the nearby car.

A search of the car yielded a wallet belonging to the victim of the earlier armed robbery.

Attorneys for Holland had argued that because DNA cleared him of the rape, he should not be linked to the car where the attack was committed and the wallet was found.

The victim in the robbery and attempted murder case, who had been slashed with a box cutter, picked Holland and his uncle out of a lineup after the wallet was discovered.

The rape victim, who was eight months' pregnant at the time of the assault, testified at Wednesday's hearing in support of Holland's motion to have the lineup evidence suppressed.

The woman, who now lives in Milwaukee, said she repeatedly told Chicago police and prosecutors they had the wrong man.

But she said authorities pressed her into agreeing that Holland was the rapist by telling her she had been using drugs shortly before the assault and was confused and frightened at the time she identified him.